Progress With Smart Valves Will Lead to 10 Percent Higher Growth in the $55 Billion Valve Industry

McIlvaine Company has revised its forecast for growth in the industrial valve industry over the next five years. The current forecast is for 5 percent growth. This is being revised to 5.5 percent CAGR for the 2013-2017 period. The basis is the increased anticipated revenues from the sales of smart valves. This is the latest forecast in Industrial Valves: World Markets published by the McIlvaine Company.

($ Millions)

Continent

2013

Africa

2,913

America

15,483

Asia

23,956

Europe

13,340

Total

55,692

The valve forecasts are defined to match the individual valve supplier revenues, so they include smart valve technology where it is sold by the valve supplier but not by an independent automation supplier.

The biggest growth will occur in Asia (including the Middle East and two of the BRIC countries (China and India). The oil and gas sector is leading the way toward smart valves. For sub-sea oil and gas, the use of intelligent control systems for valve trees is becoming a defining factor of intelligent well development. All electric subsea production control systems are replacing industry standard electro-hydraulic control systems, with the aim of making them more reliable, more responsive and more cost effective.

The oil and gas industry is moving toward valve technology with embedded processor and networking capability to work alongside sophisticated monitoring technology coordinated through a central control station. The goal has been to link control valves to an extended data network, coordinating control valve operation with the increasingly detailed data available on flow rates and operating conditions. Connecting valves to a network allows distributed control, which can enable operators to reconfigure piping and networking systems so that a field can continue producing even if there is a blockage in, or damage to, the pipeline network.

Another goal is to develop valves that consume less power to create systems that can be deployed in applications where conventional valves cannot be used due to the lack of power.

One manufacturer leading the way in smart valve development is Emerson Process Management. The range of high-performance Fisher digital valves enabled the implementation of customized valve designs to cope with the pressure, flow capacity and temperature demands of the world's first twin-mega-train LNG plant.